Stacy Sivinski: Make the Ritual of Writing As Cozy as Possible

Stacy Sivinski was raised in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and now is a writing and literature professor in the Midwest. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Notre Dame with a specialty in sensory studies and 19th-century women’s writing. In her fiction, Stacy focuses on themes of sisterhood, self-discovery, and magic. Follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

Stacy Sivinski

Photo by Stacy Sivinski

In this interview, Stacy discusses how a trip to New Orleans helped inspire her debut fantasy novel, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Stacy Sivinski
Literary agent: Adria Goetz Atria Books
Book title: The Crescent Moon Tearoom
Publisher: Atria Books
Release date: October 1, 2024
Genre/category: Fantasy
Previous titles: Fairy Tales of Appalachia
Elevator pitch: A “charming, uplifting, and utterly enchanting” (Lana Harper) debut novel about three clairvoyant sisters who face an unexpected twist of fate at the bottom of their own delicate porcelain cups.

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What prompted you to write this book?

In the early summer of 2016, I visited New Orleans for the very first time. There were plenty of things that I wanted to see and do, including eating lunch at Antoine’s and listening to live jazz on Frenchmen Street. But getting my tea leaves read at a tiny shop in the quarter called The Bottom of the Cup was at the top of my list. The year before the trip, I’d started learning how to read tarot cards, and I was curious about other types of fortune telling practices.

After spotting the giant blue teacup sign hanging above the shop’s front door, my friends and I went inside and eagerly paid $35 for a session with the resident reader. While I sipped on chai, I asked the cashier to tell me about the history of the shop. He said that it was originally opened by a pair of sisters-in-law in the 1920s and had been run by the same family ever since. As I grabbed a chair at one of the café tables to wait my turn, I asked myself, “What if the sisters were witches and the shop was enchanted?” And that’s when the first seed of The Crescent Moon Tearoom started to take root.

When I returned home to the Midwest, I kept going back to this idea of an enchanted teashop, and I started to look into the history of tearooms in the U.S. I learned that these businesses became incredibly popular during the late-19th and early 20th centuries when women were starting to emerge in the public sphere and searching for safe places to rest their feet along the way. These tearooms were usually owned and operated by women, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to have someone on staff who could read fortunes at the bottom of their customers’ cups. The more I learned about them, the more tearooms started to seem like magical places where women could expand their realities to better fit their fantasies for the future. And I felt like there was an important story to be told there about the power of sisterhood and seemingly simple pleasures.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The initial idea for the book came to me during that trip to New Orleans in 2016. But I was in my early days as a PhD student at the University of Notre Dame at the time, so the story was put on the back burner for a while. When I started working on my dissertation, I had this deep fear that I would hate writing by the end of it because that’s what seems to happen to a lot of graduate students. So, to try and remember why writing is fun and worthwhile, I started outlining The Crescent Moon Tearoom.

I began drafting in November of 2020 for NaNoWriMo and wrote for two hours every morning before shifting over to work on my dissertation. By March, I’d finished my dissertation and had a first draft of the novel. Over the summer, I dug back into the manuscript, rewriting about two-thirds of it to try and better capture the complexity of each sister and develop the overall style. I started sending the book out to agents in the fall of 2021 and signed with my agent (the lovely and talented Adria Goetz) in spring 2023. We sent the book out on submission in June, and in a matter of weeks, we received four offers. The novel went to auction before I signed with Atria Books at the end of the summer.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I’ve been absolutely delighted to discover how creative and collaborative the publication process can be. When I was working in academia, it always seemed like writing was a very isolating experience. Unless you’re co-authoring a project (which isn’t very common in my field), you lock yourself in the office with your research, write an article, and then submit it to a journal for publication. And once you send in that final version, it often feels like your writing has reached the end of its journey. This kind of work is extremely valuable, of course, but as a multi-media artist and creative writer, the process sometimes makes me feel too boxed in. This hasn’t been the case at all when it comes to fiction writing.

Working with my editor on the revisions was so energizing, and it feels like my novel has only really come to life after I submitted the final version last year. Since then, my team at Atria and I have had a blast working together to share the story with readers, and I’ve even commissioned an illustrator to create some pieces of character art. There’s been so much room for creativity, and the world I’ve made only seems to be growing though the final words have already made it onto the page.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The most surprising part of the writing process was how it allowed me to feel closure while grieving. While I was working on the first draft of the novel in the spring of 2021, both my grandmothers passed away within two months of each another. At the start of my novel, the characters have also lost someone close to them, and their journey involves learning how to remember the best of the past while embracing the possibilities of the future. As an author, I experienced that same journey alongside my characters, infusing all the richest memories of my grandmothers into the text, where it felt like they were helping me shift into a new period of my life. In many ways, it feels like I’ve been able to keep them with me by impressing the memories I shared with them onto the page, and that’s been something truly special.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

At its heart, The Crescent Moon Tearoom is about learning how to stay close to home even if your journey takes you beyond the threshold. I hope that after reading this story, my readers will feel like the relationships that have nourished them in the past can grow as their own dreams start to shift in unexpected ways. I also hope that by the time they reach the final chapter, readers will remember that the simplest moments hold the most magic.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Make the ritual of writing as cozy as possible. Sometimes, in trying to protect our time and reach a certain word count, we can forget that writing is fun, and our bodies start to react against it. A worried feeling grows in the pit of our stomach when we’re confronted with a blank page, and our thoughts start to wander toward worries of not being able to finish the story. What’s helped me the most is weaving all the things I love into my daily writing ritual: a warm cup of spiced tea, a slice of cake, the company of my cats. If you have a favorite scented candle that calms you down with a single indrawn breath, light it as you’re sitting down to write, and you may be surprised by how much of your nervousness goes away by the time you start to type.

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